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Auguste Béhal (1859-1941), Maître de Conférences (Assistant Professor) at the Sorbonne then Full Professor at the School of Pharmacy (Paris), leads many vocations among these students (Blaise, Delaby, Delepine, Detoeuf, Fourneau, Sommelet, Tiffeneau, Valeur, etc.). However, why is he embraced the vocation chemist organic chemist ? This choice is undoubtedly dictated by the meeting of Adolphe Wurtz (1817-1884) and Charles Friedel (1832-1899) who made mature in him a passion for chemical research during his formation. Nevertheless, the historical context of the city of Lens, a modest city of 2.500 inhabitants in the north of France, and the influence of two other characters : Guislain Decrombecque (1797-1870), agronomist, and Alfred Wagon (1849-1928), 2nd class pharmacist, are also noteworthy. We will outline how these two people have directly and indirectly contributed to the Béhal career.

Christophle Glaser was born in Basel in Switzerland. He was apothecary of the King’s brother and became demonstrator of chemistry at the King’s Gardens in Paris. He had a bad reputation reported by Fontenelle or by the Marchioness of Sévigné. He had also been suspected during the inquiry concerning the Brinvilliers’ murders. He was also known as the author of a book of chemistry, entitled Traité de la Chymie, that had been translated into German or English. He received Lemery in his laboratory. Fontenelle reported that Lémery left Glaser very quickly to go to Montpellier, but he is supposed to have stayed for a longer time with him. Lemery and Glaser had the same opinion on many subjects and their books were similar on many points. It is then established that Glaser was really one of Lemery’s master.

Who were the chemists at the Paris Royal Academy of Sciences in the time of the Lémerys ? From the nomination of Nicolas Lémery, in 1699, until his death, in 1715, thirteen members of the Academy belonged to the section of Chemistry, and twenty-four until the death of Louis Lémery in 1743. In total, some thirty members made contributions dealing with chemistry, either famous like Réaumur and Buffon, or as obscure as Deschiens de Ressons, who opposed Louis Lémery. On the institutional level, most members of the chemical were promoted up to the coveted seats of senior members (pensionnaires) and several sat among the chief officiers (directeur, sous-directeur). The others were already too old when they entered or died too early : they merely stayed in the low rank of junior fellows (élève, then adjoint), or in the middle rank of associate (associé). A feature of their academic career was the porosity between the sections : a few members made it through the grades of both the section of chemistry and another among those of the “ physical sciences” (anatomy and botany). Many also had other positions, including in education : most of them had chairs or were deputy professors at the Jardin du Roi or the Collège royal, even more than at the Faculty of Medicine. On the sociological level, family recruitment was more important within the group of chemists than among the other members : in Nicolas Lémery’s time, nearly two thirds of them belonged to a sibling or dynasty. They usually had learnt chemistry at Faculty of Medicine or practiced it in their apothecary laboratory. The apothecaries were more numerous than ever : on the fourteen of them who belonged to the Royal Academy between 1666 and 1793, seven sat next to Nicolas Lémery. Nevertheless, a higher consideration was attached to the physicians, and apothecaries such as Lémery himself became medical doctors and started lineages of physicians. Lastly, on the scientific level, there was an important porosity among the research fields : non only members of the “ mathematical sciences” sometime also published on chemistry, but the chemist Du Fay did publish in the six fields related to the six sections of the Academy during his fifteen year career. Inversely, the works of several members of the chemical section were merely devoted to medicine or botany. Lastly, on the scientific level, there was an important porosity among the research fields : non only members of the “ mathematical sciences” sometime also published on chemistry, but the chemist Du Fay did publish in the six fields related to the six sections of the Academy during his fifteen year career. Inversely, the works of several members of the chemical section were merely devoted to medicine or botany.

Nicolas Lémery was the first chemist to have a mechanistic approach to chemistry. Starting from the acids-bases theory in which two chemicals react with each other in a battle between the pointed acids and the porous bases, he expands his vision to the chemical reaction, which is for him the merging and the transformation of two protagonists into a new identity, resulting in a relationship between the microscopic and the macroscopic.

The copy of the innovative book written by Jean Rey in 1630, entitied : The Essays on the reasons why the weight of stain and lead increased when they were burnt, which is nowadays kept in the BIU Sante, pole Pharmacie, proved to be the authentic copy which had been used by Pierre Bayer when he rediscovered Jean Rey's Works. It was also the same copy that Gobey used when he real- ized his new edition of the Essays in 1777. This copy first belonged to M. de Villars from La Rochelle, and then was acquired by M. de Villiers, who accepted to lend it to Bayen. The probes for this identification were detailed in the article.

Jean Rey, a physician from The Bugue, a little town near Bergerac, published, in 1630, a book entitled "Essays" in which he explained the increase of the mass of lead, when it was strongly heated, by the fixation of a part of the air. This revolutionary publication was not received by the European scientists, because the Father Mersenne, "the secretary of learned Europe", was not able to repeat his experiments. Between 1774 and 1775, Pierre Bayen, who was a military apothecary, published his Works concerning the "precipitate per se", for us HgO, showing that when this compound was destroyed by heating, it produced a gas, and that the mass of this gas and the mass of the mercury obtained were equal to the mass of the "precipitate per se". He concluded that the phlogiston theory was contradictory with the results of the experiments. When, later on, Lavoisier published his important article on the increase of the mass of steal when it was heated in the air, he "forgot" to cite the Works of Bayen. In January 1775, Pierre Bayen published a letter in which he mentioned that he had discovered an exemplar of Jean Rey's book and explained that this physician of the 17th century had supposed the explanation that had been proved by Lavoisier. Nicolas Gobet then published a new edition of the "Essays" in 1777, but this new edition became itself quite rare. An inscription pencilled on the book kept by the British Museum pretends that all the exemplars Lavoisier could find were destroyed. It is not rigorous to conclude on a single document, especially when it is not signed, but it is sufficient to induce doubt.

Nicolas Louis Vauquelin was born in a little thatched cottage in Saint-André-d'Hébertot, in Normandy, on May 16th 1763. He went to Rouen and then to Paris where he met Antoine de Fourcroy and became his co-worker and his friend. They published together sixty articles, and he published alone a hundred and twenty articles. He became a pharmacist in 1787. He occupied simultaneously or not many important University positions. He was Associate Professor at École polytechnique, Professor at École des mines, Professor at Collège de France, Director of School of Pharmacy, Professor at Museum d'histoire naturelle, Professor at Faculty of Medicine. He became Empire Knight, Member of Institute of France, Member and President of Academy of Medicine, Member and President of Society of Pharmacy. He discovered and isolated chrome and discovered beryllium. He was a very efficient professor and many of his students were well-known scientists. He died on November 14th 1829., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.)

In the early 19th century the concept of miasmata played a leading role in the explanation of contagious diseases and epidemics. Furthermore the new chemistry, developed by Lavoisier and his colleagues, facilitated the introduction of a new way of disinfecting the air and destroying contagious substances. These facts facilitated the introduction of a new way of fighting disease carriers, whatever their nature might be, by means of fumigations. These treatments were carried out by means of disinfecting vaporous agents, produced by mixing mineral acids with sodium chloride and manganese peroxide. In 1801 Guyton-Morveau published a book on this subject, which in 1802 appeared in a Dutch enlarged edition. The Netherlands were in urgent need of an effective means of fighting disease carriers, since its coastal areas were frequently stricken by epidemics. The French government, incited by the Institut National, the Conseil de Sante and the Ecole de Médecine de Paris, gave top priority to the introduction of Guyton's salutary operation in France. In 1814 the Dutch Society of Sciences held a contest about the applicability and effects of the fumigations invented by Guyton-Morveau. In 1823, two entries were received, one of which was awarded the gold medal. It turned out to have been written by the translator of Guyton's book, published in 1801.

This study of a corpus of French chemistry journals between 1800 and 2010 shows the relevance of the journal as the primary mode of communication, confirming the results of the general survey presented in this issue. However, a study of their contents is questioning the apparent unity of this phenomenon: the journal appears as a physical medium consisting in a common container including a wide range of information categories transferred over time to digital platforms in development since the end of the 20(th) century.

The 2012 Nobel Prize for chemistry has been won by Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka for their work on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Those receptors (3% of human genome) evolutionary are derived from one 1 or 2 ancestors and are able to recognize external message as different as light, odorants, gustative molecules and intercellular messages such as hormones and neurotransmitters. They are targets of 30-40% of therapeutic drugs. Robert J. Lefkowitz has been one of the leaders of the field from more than 40 years and has built several key concepts of the domain. Brian Kobilka was successful, in 2007, in producing a crystal structure of the β2-adrenergic receptor. This paved the way for the production of a series of almost 50 GPCR crystal structures both in inactive and active forms., (© 2012 médecine/sciences – Inserm / SRMS.)

The Medical School of Paris was not immune from the movement of scientific thought which grew during the second half of the nineteenth century. Experimental practice had by then become the method of scientific thought. Any scientist worthy of the name was expected to follow the process of observation, analysis, experiment and synthesis: whether on the desk or in the mind,A science of experimentation par excellence, chemistry became an example of a scientific approach that medicine needed to appropriate to itself. Between 1853 and 1884, there was only one Professor of Chemistry at the Medical School of Paris. Charles Adolphe Wurtz was dean of the School from 1866 to 1875. This article aims to explain the impact of his teaching and his deanship on the importance of chemistry in medical studies.

Strasbourg occupied during the 19th century a privileged place in chemistry, as well in education as in research, and that in particular in three institutions created after the dissolution of the old University during the French Revolution: the Faculty of Sciences, the School then Faculty of Medicine created in 1794, and the School of Pharmacy created in 1804. In 1871, Alsace was annexed by Germany. The chair of medical chemistry in the Faculty of Medicine was successively occupied by: Pierre François Nicolas (1743-1816) in 1794-1795, Frédéric Louis Ehrmann (1741-1801) from 1796 to 1798, Gabriel Masuyer (1761-1849) from 1798 to 1838, and Amédée Cailliot (1805-1884) from 1838 to 1871. The chair of chemistry in the School of Pharmacy was successively occupied by: Louis Hecht (1771-1857)from 1804 to 1835, Jean François Persoz (1805-1868) from 1835 to 1852, Adrien Loir (1816-1899) from 1852 to 1855, Charles Frédéric Gerhardt and Eugène Théodore Jacquemin (1828-1909) from 1856 to 1871.

The first part of our study of the activities of Nicolas Lémery and his sons Louis and Jacques at the Académie royale des sciences began with a description of the structure of the Académie as a result of its reformation in 1699. Then we explained how Nicolas Lémery performed his duties at the Académie beginning from 1699 until his death in 1715. In this second part we are concentrating in a similar way on the activities of Nicolas's son Louis for the Académie, where he was a member from 1700 to 1743.

Issued from the pharmaceutical tradition, the "extractive", formerly "extract", is a typical artefact of proximate analysis introduced in the new nomenclature of 1787. After beign one of its most active promotors, Fourcroy published with Vauquelin a posthumous paper in 1810 in which he expressed some doubts about the substance. Theoretically present in almost all vegetable extracts, some chemists, pharmacists and physicians try to isolate the extractive without success and instead accumulated contradictory results. At the end, the eviction of this chimaera held by sceptical chemists such as Chevreul and Braconnot and the conversion of other analysts, dismissed extractive and the name almost gradually disappears at the begining of the 1830s.

During the transition between the 19th and 20th century, Auguste Béhal (1859-1941), a native of Lens (France, Pas-de-Calais), renewed organic chemistry teaching at the Paris School of Pharmacy by the introduction of atomic notation and pre-electronic mechanisms. This revolution primarily affects the future pharmacists. Thus, Béhal becomes the leader of a "School" of thought and directs the work of many students called "Béhaliens": Ernest Fourneau (1872-1949), Marc Tiffeneau (1873-1945), Marcel Sommelet (1877-1952), etc. Among these students, three are also from Lens: Amand Valeur (1870-1927), Raymond Delaby (1891-1958) and André Detoeuf (1884-1931). The latter, initially, will follow the footsteps of his older siblings (pharmacy studies, writing a thesis under the direction of Behal); however, despite having started a career in academia, he left his post for the industry (Etablissements Kuhlmann and Billault).

Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738) was a well known physician from Leiden, who was essentially known in France for three of his books, which had been translated into French, and had much success during thel8th century, Elements of Chemistry, Aphorisms and Materia Medica. There was also a fourth book, the Treatise of the Virtue of Medicines redacted by his students from notes taken during his lessons, which was translated into French in 1729. This volume, in in-80 format, of 471 pages, did not meet with the same success as his other books. It is anyway very interesting, because it shows that Boerhaave, even if he were Professor of Chemistry, was not at all a iatrochemist but behaved as an iatromechanicist.

This first part of our study of the activities of Nicolas Lémery and his sons Louis and Jacques at the Académie Royale des Sciences begins with a description of the structure of the Académie as a result of its reformation in 1699, with an emphasis on the roles of its members as defined in its règlement. Then we concentrate on how Nicolas Lémery performed his duties at the Académie beginning from 1699 until his illness and death in 1715. Nicolas's most important contributions were his study on antimony, published as a treatise, and other memoirs on different subjects, mainly related to chemistry, which was the field in which he excelled and has remained famous. This first part is going to be followed by two parts where the activities of Nicolas's sons Louis and Jacques at the Académie are examined in a similar way.

First devoted to research and its applications in chemistry and microbiology, the institute was created in 1894. Its founder, Georges Jacquemin was the son of the professor of chemistry of the school of pharmacy of Nancy. He was first a student in pharmacy but he did not finish the last examinations... Three years ago, he created or participated to the creation of the Institut La Claire, near Morteau in the Jura, with same activities. The Institut Jacquemin settled in special houses and laboratories where were studied and prepared numerous chemical and biological products, particularly selected yeasts used in wine-making, brewery, cider-making, also phytosanitary chemical products and, in 1902, Ferment Jacquemin which was a depurative and was considered as a drug. Georges Jacquemin died in 1925 but his institute remainded in activity with his coworkers until 1967 and closed totally only in 1976.

Famed owing to his research works about fats and colours, the chemist M.-E. Chevreul was also greatly interested in public health. He expressed himself on this matter especially as member then chairman of the Advisory Committee of Crafts et Factories: set of laws on insanitary factories to be reconsidered, choices of processes which do not affect workers' health. He has relations with old pupils of the Polytechnics School: so he was at the beginning of Charles Freycinet's brilliant career. He read papers to the French Agricultural Society and Sciences Academy and was a juror of the academic committees of insanitary crafts.

Fourteen vegetal species were identified by Kühn in 1948 among which scrophualaria, veronica, lamium and vincetoxicum. These exhibit antigangrenous, antiinflammatory and antimicrobial activities due to iridoid components, mainly aucubin, catalpol and harpagosid.

Self-taught and polygraph, philanthropist and moralist, Madame Thiroux d'Arconville (1720-1805) published thirty works or so, all of them anonymously. She devoted herself to science, in particular to chemistry, for about ten years. She translated two books from English, improving them with a number of useful notes: Robert Dossie's The Elaboratory laid open and Peter Shaw's Chemical lectures. In the latter book, she added a long preliminary discourse which amounts to a history of applied chemistry to arts. She also carried out the more than 300 experiments on the preservation of meat from putrefaction with the aim to obtain a theory on matter transformation, which was a subject of debate among physiologists and philosophers of her time. Her results were published in 1766 in the Essai pour servir à l'histoire de la putréfaction. From the analysis of her texts, both her large culture and her scientific qualities and ambition can be emphasized.

Very few science books circulated amongst the European scientists, with so efficiency as Lemery's. His Course of Chemistry has been published 18 times in French and has been translated in Latin, English, German, Spanish, Italian and Deutch. His Treaty or Dictionnary of Drugs has been published 14 times in French and translated in foreign languages. His Universal Pharmacopeia has not been published less than 17 times in French and has also been translated in foreign languages. The longevity of these books was quite unusual, because, for exemple, his Dictionnary, first published in 1698, was published again in 1807!

Léon Monsel was born on March 13, 1816 in Gironde. He did training courses in chemist's first near of home and then in Paris. He also studied pharmacy in Pharmacy School of Paris where he succeeded on August 12, 1840 and he entered army. He remained in it until his retirement in 1874. He died at Nancy on April 15, 1878. Monsel is overall well known by his publications about coagulation power of ferric sub-sulfate from which he described three preparation ways. Current publications are exclusively foreigner. They point out advantages and disadvantages of Monsel's solution. It is used to day as hemostatic agent in minor surgical procedures such as biopsies in genecology, dermatology, proctology and O.R.L. Besides when he was stationed in Roma he studied Acqua Acetosa (acid salty gaseous water) of this town and later when he was stationed in Bordeaux, he took out a patent about manufacturing varnish from metallic resinates.

Some alchemists and chemists are known in Lorraine at the beginning of the 17th century. But "real" chemists appear only in the middle of the 18th century. In Nancy, the primary official chemists are the professors of the Royal Collège of medicine, then those of the Faculty of medicine in 1776 and after: Henry Michel du Tennetar and Pierre-François Nicolas. In Metz, the first successful attempt of a chemical course is obtained by the apothecary Jean-Baptiste Thyrion from 1765 to 1769. Michel is his successor in 1778. His teaching is immediately and widely successful. Around Michel, the members of the Royal Society of science and art and the practitioners of the military hospital are also very actice. After the Revolution, many years will be necessary to Nancy and Metz to obtain the creating of a new universitary chemical teaching.

Louis Melsen was born at Louvain, he spent four years in Paris, working in Dumas's laboratory. Four letters from Melsens to Chevreul, since 1951 to 1880, are commented on. Two letters relate to Van Helmont and common interest of the two scientists in history of sciences. The others recall Melsens's proposal that potassium iodide can cure and prevent lead and mercury poisoning, and Chevreul's researches about colours seeing.

Born in Paris on September 28, 1852, son of an eastern railways' employee and of a dressmaker, Henri Moissan's secondary schooling in Meaux did not allow him to get access to the sesame diploma "baccalauréat" (GCE). In 1869, he did obtain a special certificate of secondary schooling so that he could become an apprentice in watch making. That could have been the end of the story, but dreadful event for France appeared to have beneficial effects for Moissan. Under the threat of the Prussian army, Moissan's family took refuge near Paris. This gave the young Henri the opportunity to register as a student for the second-class pharmacy diploma, which did not need, at the time, the GCE. Moissan became then a trainee in pharmacy in 1871. Meanwhile, he followed the special schooling of "Ecole de chimie" founded by E. Frémy, and then joined the laboratory of Dehérain at the Museum, where he worked in plant physiology. He finally obtained the famous "baccalauréat" (GCE) and could register as a student in first-class pharmacy. He became a pharmacist as well as a doctor in sciences. In 1883, Moissan was named professor at the school of pharmacy in Paris. In 1886, he isolated fluorine by electrolysis of fluorhydric acid, in the presence of potassium fluoride, at a low temperature. He then studied diamond synthesis and gave a start to high temperature chemistry, designing his famous furnace. These findings and many others allowed Moissan to rise to membership in many learned academies around the world. Crowning achievement, Moissan won the Nobel Prize in 1906. A man of culture, collector of autographs and paintings, he died in 1907. Nothing of that would have been possible if there had not been a second-class pharmacist diploma. The history of Henri Moissan is one of a rise from apprenticeship to the Nobel Prize.

On December 10 1906, Henri Moissan was in Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize for chemistry for his isolation of fluorine in 1886 and for his electric arc furnace he described for the first time in 1892 then later improved and which opened the way to the new field of high-temperature chemistry. This was the first Nobel Prize for chemistry awarded to a Frenchman and Moissan was the only French pharmacist to have received this high distinction. He died suddenly at the age of 54 years, two months after receiving his Nobel Prize. In this presentation, we report the main elements of his biography, recalling the man, the teacher and the great collector of paintings and autographs, particularly from the period of the French revolution. We have used several unpublished or little known documents concerning this great scientist who with is broad culture and malicious humor always found the time, despite his many obligations, to satisfy his literary and artistic tastes.

Diamond synthesis by Moissan brought about fierce controversies and harsh criticisms. Our purpose is not to settle the debate but to show that many criticisms were not as rigorous as it could be expected from scientific arguments. We will briefly describe how diamond synthesis developed towards methods that make Moissan's work appears as quite reasonable. The paper concludes with a tribute to Moissan, Hannay and Burton who opened the way towards modern diamond synthesis and the predicted revolution of the semiconducting diamond.

Way followed by Moissan in the field of inorganic chemistry. Isolation of fluorine and its developments. Artificial diamond production by simultaneous actions of high pressures and high temperatures. Arc electric furnaces, and powerful models enabling temperatures up to 3000 degrees C. High pressures obtained by fast cooling of iron-carbon alloys melted at high temperature. Numerous distinctions from foreign Chemical Societies, of which the Nobel Prize.

The discovery of four halogens is due to pharmacists. Chlorine was isolated by Carl Wilhem Scheele, a Swedish who was first an assistant to a pharmacist, then a pharmacist himself. Bernard Courtois, a pharmacist under the First Empire, the son of a saltpetre worker isolated iodine in I811, after a modification of the ancestral production protocol of potassium nitrate, which is the major component of the gunpowder: he replaced wood ashes by varech ashes which are less expensive. Antoine Jerôme Balard was still an assistant in chemistry and physics when he discovered bromine in the residues of the salt marshes. He became soon after a pharmacist and started a famous career as then he became Professor in the College de France and General Inspector of Higher Education. The last halogen: fluorine was isolated by Henri Moissan who received the Nobel Prize of Chemistry. The discovery will be the subject of our next communication.

At the beginning was the willow bark, which was considered as a medicine by Hippocrates, Dioscorides and Plinus. During the XVIIIth century, the Reverend Edward Stone re-discovered the willow for the cure of agues. In 1829, the french pharmacist Pierre Joseph Leroux isolated salicin. Raffaelle Piria was the first to synthesize salicylic acid from salicin (salicoside). Hermann Kolbe prepared salicylic acid from sodium phenate and carbon dioxide. And then acetylsalicylic acid was first prepared by Charles Gerhardt in 1853, but he did not succeed in identifying its structure. Felix Hoffmann, Arthur Eichengrun and Heinrich Dresen from Bayer Laboratories were at the origin of the use of Aspirin as a medicine. In 1971, John Vane showed that aspirin-like drugs inhibited prostaglandine synthesis.

C.F. Gerhardt living in Montpellier for ten years as professor of chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences. Far from Paris, he worted alone and intensely on a Handbooks of chemistry relative to organic chemistry. Later, his Treature of chemistry result from time spent in the wilderness. Found also happiness trough the birth of his two sons.

The sudden death of Charles Gerhardt at forty years age, on August 1856, lost his widow and his three young children in a dramatic financial situation. Many people have been moved and helped Mrs. Gerhardt. The prestigious chemist Thenard has founded the "Société de secours des Amis des sciences" and the two sons of Gerhardt have obtained an imperial grant to make their schooling at Strasbourg's secondary school.

The epitaph of his gravestone on the Saint Helen cemetery of Strasbourg indicates the precise dates of beginning (21 August 1816) and tragic end (19 August 1856) of the eventfull but short live of the renowned chemist Charles Gerhardt. Accompagned by a Foundation, unfortunately disappeared during the last war, a bronze effigy was dedicated in 1921 to his memory in the Chemistry Institute. As regards the house where he was born, it bears a commemorative plate fastebed 1965 and restored 2006.

The opening lectures, which formerly marked the beginning of a professor's duties in an academic institution, are important documents for science historians. Several opening lectures in chemistry (organic, inorganic, analytical, biological or medicinal chemistry), which were given by French pharmacists in the Ecole or the Faculté de pharmacie de Paris, in the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris, or in the Collège de France are analyzed. First, these lectures reveal formal aspects, such as the history of the chair or a eulogy of the works and personal qualities of the predecessor. Then, the educational aspects contained in the opening lectures provide information, as well as the opinions of the new professor about teaching and research, history of the subject and its interest for the pharmaceutical students. The final aspects cited concerned the education of the new professor, the birth of his vocation and the help provided by his mentors during his university studies, his periods of instruction and his first experimental works. The opening lecture reveals sociological aspects of how knowledge was built.

Auguste Cahours succeeded Dumas, as professor to Ecole centrale, and Chevreul, as examiner to Ecole polytechnique. He was connected with many french and foreign chemists. His works relating to vapour densities, radicals and organometallic compounds were conclusive for acceptance of the Avogadro's law and setting up valency by chemists about 1860.

In 1900, the term as used for the first time by Moses Gomberg, a chemist working in Michigan University. He discovered the triphenylmethyl radical when he treated triphenylmethyl chloride by metals (Ag, Zn). The term "free radicals" has been used for 93 years to distinguish between radicals as distinct chemical species and the term radical used to describe a substitutive group. In 1993, JUPAC decided to call , "radicals" chemical species bearing an unpaired electron and "groups" the substituting groups.

Lavoisier and his co-workers (Guyton de Morveau, Bertholet, Fourcroy) considered that acids were constituted of oxygen and of something else that they called radicals. These radicals were known in some cases, i.e. nitrogen for nitrous acid, carbon for carbonic acid, phosphorus for phosphoric acid. In the case of sulfur, the sulfuric radical could be associated with different quantities of oxigen leading to sulfuric or sulfurous acids. In other cases radicals remained unknown at the time i.e. muriatic radical for muriatic acid, or benzoyl radical for benzoic acid. It is interesting to notice that Lavoisier evoked the case of compound radicals constituted of different substances such as carbon and hydrogen.

Since its coming out (1754) until the publication of the Annales de chimie (1789), the Journal de Médecine, Chirurgie, Pharmacie, &c. received papers and pieces of news from chemists; many of them cultivated their love for chemistry while they practised health professions.